Essays and book reviews on sociology, politics, and culture.
We’re in the fourth week of the second Trump administration, and as many commentators have noted there is simply so much going on in U.S. politics—and therefore global politics: What happens on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in large measure shapes the world.
A growing club of far-right, hardline nationalist, and fascist political leaders is working hard to transform the world. They must be opposed.
Is fascism today essentially internationalist—or is it made up of a series of discrete, nationally bounded projects?
Looking around the world today, it’s hard to escape the sense that fascism has become an internationalist project and one that transcends familiar geopolitical blocs and transnational coalitions: The new Fascist International cuts across NATO and BRICS, the West and the Global South, drawing in actors from all major geopolitical camps to form a multinational coalition of far-right, hardline nationalist, fascist-adjacent and outright fascist political actors.
Trump's coalition is filled with contradictions that threaten its stability. The Left should highlight these weaknesses while advancing a bold vision of its own.
There’s an old adage attributed to Napoleon: “Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.”
Trump’s first week back in the White House saw him assert his newly reclaimed authority: The 47th president fired off dozens of executive orders, appeared before a variously starstruck, cowering Davos audience, confidently mapped out his administration’s focus on Fox News’s Hannity, and, after threatening a full-blown trade war, reportedly forced Colombia, the U.S.’s premier ally in South America, to accept planeloads of deported migrants.
Trump wants to wrest control of Greenland from Denmark. But replacing a former colonizer with a global hegemon is only a recipe for deeper subjugation, not authentic freedom.
“BLANCHE: What you are talking about is brutal desire—just—Desire!—the name of that rattle-trap street-car that bangs through the Quarter, up one old narrow street and down another…”
— Arthur Miller, A Streetcar Named Desire
One of the strangest episodes in the still-unfolding Trump saga is the 42nd/44th president’s growing interest in Greenland, a territory controlled by Denmark, which Trump has said he wants to incorporate into the United States.
Trump has had his sights on Greenland since at least 2019. He first floated the idea of “buying” the autonomous Danish territory five years ago, which the president, in typical property-developer fashion, described as “essentially a real estate deal”:
In our crisis-ridden world, could centralized economic planning, rather than the ideal of free markets, be the solution?
Leigh Phillips and Michael Rozworski (2019). The People’s Republic of Walmart: How the World’s Biggest Corporations are Laying the Foundation for Socialism. Verso Books.
What makes this cleverly titled book worth returning to five years after its publication? The authors, Leigh Phillips and Michael Rozworski, develop a deceptively simple argument: Pay closer attention to what major corporations like Walmart do, and less to what free-market ideologues say, and you’ll find that most capitalist enterprises operate more like carefully planned command economies than idealized market actors. Centralized planning, far from being relegated to the scrapheap of twentieth-century history, is alive and well at the heart of American capitalism: It lies at the core of what companies like Amazon and Walmart do every day.
Reagan(2024). Directed by: Sean McNamara. Starring: Dennis Quaid, Penelope Ann Miller, Jon Voight. (IMDb)
Zoë Schiffer (2024).Extremely Hardcore: Inside Elon Musk's Twitter. Portfolio. 330 pp.
Today is Election Day in the United States, a defining moment not just for the U.S. but for the world as a whole.
The Apprentice(2024). Director: Ali Abbasi. Writer: Gabriel Sherman. Starring: Sebastian Stan, Jeremy Strong, Maria Bakalova. (IMdb)
Civil War(2024). Director/Writer: Alex Garland. Starring: Kirsten Dunst, Wagner Moura, Cailee Spaeny. A24 Films. (Rotten Tomatoes) (Imdb)